The AstroStat Slog

Google Sky is good for a quick look “what’s that you just saw over there?”, but not for anything more than that. Not yet anyway. Mind you, I think it is a good thing. It is easy to use, and definitely worth a look as an astronomy popularization tool. But there are a number of astro visualization programs that can (so to speak) beat the pants off Google Sky with one hand tied behind the back. Check these out (all open source): Continue reading ‘Beyond Google Sky’ »

SLAC is hosting a workshop Nov 8-9, 2007, on the Future of Very High-Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy. Continue reading ‘The future of Very High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy’ »

Much to everybody’s surprise, they let some astronomers into the recently concluded Joint Statistical Meeting at Salt Lake City, UT. There were two three astrostat sessions: [#45 on Probing the Universe with Nonparametric Methods,] #367 on Bayesian Applications in Astronomy and Physics (chaired by David van Dyk), and #411 on Image Analysis in Solar- and Astro-physics (chaired by Yaming Yu and Thomas Lee). Both [of the latter] sessions were dominated by presentations from CHASC collaborators.

Hyunsook and I have preliminary findings (work done with the help of the X-Atlas group) on the efficacy of using spectral proxies to classify low-mass coronal sources, put up as a poster at the XGratings workshop. The workshop has a “poster haiku” session, where one may summarize a poster in a single transparency and speak on it for a couple of minutes. I cannot count syllables, so I wrote a limerick instead: Continue reading ‘Summarizing Coronal Spectra’ »

This is the cover article in the science section of New York Times (July 10, 2007) and talks about Digital Access to a Sky Century at Harvard.

*Click the link to see the article. You may need to sign-up for an access but it’s free.

GLAST workshop will be held at Science Center (Hall A, located at the 1st floor) of Harvard University. Nice opportunity to learn about GLAST mission and its programs. Free registration and open to everyone. Please, visit
http://glast.gsfc.nasa.gov/workshops/boston/ for registration and further information.

John Rice is visiting IIC. The meeting and his talk is scheduled on Friday, June 8, at 11:30am (room 403 at 60 Oxford St.).

Title: Event Weighted Tests for Periodicity in a Sequence of Photon Arrival Times:
Detecting Gamma-ray Pulsars.

[Added] Another meeting is scheduled at the stat dept. located in Science Center, 4-6pm, Wednesday (June 6th).

In Spring 2006, SAMSI (Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute) program on Astrostatistics began with tutorials, followed by workshops and regular meetings of working groups (Exoplanets, Surveys and Population Studies, Gravitational Lensing, Source Detection and Feature Detection, Particle Physics). Workshop speakers/participants and working group members brought up many statistical challenges in astronomy and physics and had extensive discussions. Summaries and relevant materials are available from the websites (click the links; some materials such as journal papers are password protected).

Since Summer 2005, G. Jogesh Babu (Statistics) and Eric Feigelson (Astronomy) have organized lectures and lab sessions on statistics for astronomers and physicists. Lecturers are professors from Penn State statistics department and invited renown scientists from different countries. Students show diverse demography as well. Within a week or so, students listen Statistics 101 to recently published statistical theories particularly applied to astronomical data. They also learn how to use R, a statistical software and script language to perform statistics they learn through lectures. Past two years, this summer school proved its uniqueness and usefulness. More information on the upcoming school can be found at http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su07/index.html and other topics regarding astrostatistics at Center for AstroStatistics at Penn State.